DECEMBER 31, 1903] 
NATURE 
209 
articles of any morning—as like one another as herrings— 
are awed with their display of culture, of depth of thought, 
of knowledge, and with what is more astounding than 
‘anything else, an infinitely perfect Oxford polish. Watch- 
‘ing the performances of an Oxford man of letters is like 
‘watching a good billiard player or a skilled musician. His 
mind is filled with the thoughts of other men, pigeonholed, 
ready for use. He thinks those thoughts to be his own, 
and he never takes in the real meaning of the fable of 
Diogenes and the lantern. He does really think for him- 
self in that part of his trade which is personal to himself, 
‘and he has an abundance of all learning except what 
concerns those natural sciences the applications of which 
are shaking the social and intellectual world. He 
is never grossly unfair to other men who follow the 
rules of the game recognised by Oxford; against men of 
new ideas his struggle oft availeth. In dealing with some 
questions he is a genius towering to the heavens, in others 
he is like that same spirit imprisoned in a little bottle, 
sealed up magically by the mere name of some wise man 
of antiquity. 
It is very noticeable that the Oxford man _ has 
retreated from the renaissance position and has gone 
back to the medizval. He believes in his soul that there 
is no new thing under the sun; truth is not a thing to be 
discovered, it is something already revealed in Hebrew and 
Greek books. Even if a man is doing reséarch it is after 
the poison has entered his system; his individuality has 
been practically destroyed. But for the present I am 
neglecting these real students. I am confining my attention 
to the average men of caste. These men are educated in 
the sense in which Darius and his friends were educated, 
‘excepting in this, that Oxford men do not know living 
foreign tongues, whereas the other barbarians did, and 
Oxford men pretend to know something of certain tongues 
that are dead. Every attempt to teach them by actual 
observation, actual experiment, actual trial, actual re- 
search, has succeeded well; every attempt to teach them by 
mere talk, by abstract reasoning, has failed. 
And the world now to be governed is getting more and 
more complex. Man is utilising the energies of nature in 
thousands of ways unknown to the ancients. Common 
‘people are all getting educated. Where the ancients 
wondered and trembled, we understand and give orders to 
nature. The average unit of any population was compelled 
to be what we now call an unskilled labourer. 
Now our labour is becoming more and more skilled. Are 
you aware that from one ton of coal there is as much energy, 
as much actual work, as may be done by forty thousand 
good labourers in a ten hours’ day? Our best steam engines 
utilise only one-tenth of this energy at the present time. 
But even now we know that the cost of the most unskilled 
work done by man is one thousand times the cost of the 
same work wherever it may be done by the best steam 
engines. One fact of this kind properly considered is worth 
many long essays about the effect of the engineer in alter- 
ing all the character of our civilisation. It is labour that 
is the true standard of wealth. The steam engine has 
added incalculably to the wealth of the world. We forget 
that man is no longer needed for unskilled labour, so that 
when we use unskilled labour we are using the materials 
which God has given us in the most inefficient manner 
possible. Furthermore, it becomes sweated labour, it un- 
duly taxes slcilled labour, it starves invention, and it brings 
up base, ill-fed families. 
I do not think that a fact of this kind would have been 
neglected by the philosophers of Greece or the learned men 
of Rome, but when some of us direct attention to it and 
its neglect by modern philosophers, we are sneered at as 
Philistines; when we say that the nation which does not 
pay great attention to the practical application of scientific 
knowledge of nature must cease to exist, we are jeered at. 
We are low mechanical persons enacting the part of the 
fat boy in ‘‘ Pickwick,” ‘“‘ I’se goin’ to make your flesh 
creep!’’ It is a curious kind of culture which scorns the 
lessons of history, the study of man in his relation to nature, 
the study of the enormous new forces which are now affect- 
ing the relations of nations to one another. Are you learned 
misers going for ever to gloat in secret over your learning 
or to edit for ever the same Greek texts, or for ever to spin 
NO. 1783, VOL. 69] 
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new metaphysical philosophies out of your inner, conscious- 
ness ? 
Are you for ever to labour over phrases and dogmas that 
have been-endlessly discussed by the most acute intellects 
of all time? If through a practical study of palzontology 
or biology you could get really to understand the great dis- 
covery of Darwin (and you cannot possibly get to under- 
stand it from books alone), you would see that the oldest 
puzzles of children and philosophers, from the shepherds of 
ancient Idumea to the dons of Oxford, have been solved for 
ever. Have you for one moment any idea of the magnifi- 
cent new problems that are now before us, of the wide out- 
look on the universe, the comprehensive grasp of what is 
great and what is little, which is possessed by naturalists? 
For one man who knows his English literature, who revels 
in Shakespeare, are there not ten in Oxford who scorn 
all literature which is not at least 1800 years old? If you 
must meditate about your thoughts and emotions, why not 
begin with some experimental psychology? Why is there 
so little research of any kind in any subject going on in 
Oxford? The study of the Greek language through 
Herodotus is called history. The study of the Greek 
language through the early fathers is called theology. The 
New Testament is degraded into a Greek text-book. The 
Iliad and Odyssey are only Greek exercise books. The 
clear gushing spring of the desert beloved of Erasmus and 
More is now trampled into dirt by innumerable drome- 
daries. Is it any wonder that the average healthy young 
Englishman whose common sense has been developed 
through observation and trial should leave Oxford ignorant 
of your sand-ploughing scholastic exercise work? You have 
thought him stupid, and made him believe himself to be 
stupid, when he was only showing his wisdom. The 
mental training that he might have had, that he needs in 
life, that kind of training which his ancient Persian educa- 
tion cannot give him, where is it? When he was a very 
young boy you tried to teach him arithmetic for years, a 
cruel exercise. Now he does not know what a decimal 
is: when he borrows money at 5 per cent. per month he 
does not know that he is paying 60 per cent. per annum. 
If you had let him experiment, play at keeping shop, 
actually weigh things in ounces and pounds, or pay for 
them in shillings and pence, if you had let him measure 
things in inches and tenths of an inch, it would have been 
a pleasure for him to learn. If he had spoken French and 
German, and had been encouraged to chatter in those langu- 
ages, he would not now be so ignorant. If you had encour- 
aged him to read stories, if later you had not made all read- 
ing a school task, if you had encouraged him to describe 
things, to write accounts of what he had seen; if you knew 
how to teach anybody English, the language of his country, 
if you had refrained from putting geography and history and 
other English subjects all in water-tight school class com- 
partments, he would now be fond of reading, he could use 
books, and he would go on educating himself for the rest 
of his life. You made him wear his soul out in learning 
off Euclid by heart—why did it not strike you that he ought 
to draw and measure, weigh and experiment, long before 
you tried to give him abstract reasoning of any kind ? 
How is a boy to reason about things unknown to him? 
In the nursery he got mental training through everything 
he saw, everything he clutched. Oxford took charge of 
him scholastically at the age of seven, and from that time 
onwards his higher mental powers ceased to grow. His 
mental equipment suggests the item for bread in Falstaff’s 
famous tavern account. 
And he becomes a ruler of this great nation, his duty 
during war and peace being that of a scientific adminis- 
trator. Times of actual war are few and short; in those 
times the people and property of unprepared nations are 
destroyed with .a rapidity never known in the past. In all 
old times England was unprepared for war, but this did 
not then so much matter; in future the nation that has not 
prepared during peace for possible war, by the exercise of 
the highest scientific faculty, will certainly be destroyed. 
I am afraid that Von Moltke would have laughed at the 
kind of education of Darius and his friends being regarded 
as sufficient in these modern days. Also the war between 
nations is quite intense in times of peace. The rulers of 
nations have to take care that their laws do not destroy 
